Four Great Ways To Bond With Your Virtual Workforce

Widespread globalized technology has brought with it some exciting new opportunities to create dynamic and diverse teams. Many companies, large and small, are utilizing remote and freelance workers to build teams over larger and larger areas. It’s great in terms of cost saving – without the expense of premises you’ve cut away a significant chunk of your outgoings. It’s also great for ensuring your team members do their best, working from their homes in comfort and with everything they need around them.

Though building a team of remote workers has its uses, it is also very difficult to ensure that you’ve gelled as a team. In a traditional office environment, colleagues build a natural bond which helps maintain morale, but with a team so spread out, that crucial support is difficult to elicit.

Here are a few ways you can attempt to emulate that all-important bond between your remote workers.

#1 Getting To Know Each Other Exercises

It may sometimes seem corny, but when you first bring together a team of remote workers you have to work doubly hard to ensure that everyone is able to relax and converse with one another. There is often a general uncomfortableness one has in a virtual team about small talk, but small talk shouldn’t be underrated.

“Within the lines of appropriateness, encourage your team to share things about themselves such as hobbies, interests or family details,” says Florence Hazel, an author at Researchpapersuk and Last Minute Writing, “Getting to know each other’s backgrounds helps us understand one another’s motivations, thereby helping us to bond closer as a team.”

#2 Virtual Office Tours

Once you’ve established knowledge of each other’s personalities you might feel a little more comfortable in seeing one another through live video streams. A good way to start is to encourage one another to share your work areas. Welcoming your colleagues into your offices creates a sense of a shared, communal environment in which to work.

Of course, this is something that should not be forced, and it’s a good idea to ensure that it’s mutually acceptable. On a personal level, it’s asking your colleagues to open up space within their lives which even in traditional working environments one wouldn’t normally see. But it also aids team members in establishing their home offices as a working space and supports a professional approach to their workspaces.

#3 Create Location Vlogs

Sometimes, remote workers can be very far apart indeed. One of the greatest virtues of a globalized workforce is that we can access areas of the world through expert local knowledge. Your colleagues in other parts of the world will be keen to know what your experiences are like where you are, and likewise, you’ll probably be keen to know a bit about theirs.

Encourage your team members to create short video blogs, introducing their towns or cities, even if it is just showing off their local coffee shops, restaurants or main attractions. Along with an understanding of their local culture, you’ll encourage a sense of camaraderie amongst your workforce.

#4 Schedule Coffee Breaks

“The break room is intrinsic to the morale of a traditional workforce,” writes Steven Spalding, a regular contributor to Draftbeyond and Writinity, “It is where colleagues sit and chat, drink coffee, take lunch together and engage in gossip. For some, it is an essential experience of a working day.” Though it is less easy to do this when working with a remote team, it can be achieved through well-planned coffee breaks.

Encourage your team to spend their downtime, even if it’s just a couple of 15-minute breaks a day, to spend some time catching up on a personal level. Remember that part of the function of having a team is as a support network, and on some level, this has got to put work to one side.

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